My commute’s been more difficult than usual this week. I live just south of Vauxhall, you see. Normally I’d cycle or get a bus over the bridge, but it was closed because of the helicopter crash so I have been taking the Tube.

And, Jesus Christ, if you saw the gridlock on the roads and the chaos at Kennington station, even long past rush hour, you would think it was not just the lighting of tall buildings that needs to be reviewed but the fundamental underpinnings of the whole skyscraper metropolis planned for the riverside from the bridge to Battersea.

I should point out that I’m entirely in favour of development in the area, and broadly in favour of tall buildings. The Vauxhall tower served by the crane clipped by the helicopter is bland but puts the ugly ziggurats of St George’s Wharf in their place. They in turn are more attractive and useful than the Nine Elms Cold Store — an ugly, redundant Sixties concrete box on legs — that stood there before.

Many of us who live near London’s forgotten riviera look forward to the American Embassy, the selling-like-hot-cakes flats around Battersea Power Station, the promised riverside park, cycle bridge and reborn market, even the squillion other developments that are to be shoehorned into sites currently home to Sainsbury’s, the post office, and some just-condemned gasholders. What we find absolutely bleeding hilarious is the idea that a privately funded, two-station spur bolted onto the Northern line is an adequate investment in transport for what they’re calling London’s “third city”.

With proximity to a Tube station adding 8.8 per cent to the value of a home, the new line looks like a lure for investment buyers rather than a genuine amenity. Sure, those who can afford the predominantly exorbitant 3,400 homes planned for the power station site alone will probably never live there, and certainly won’t use the Tube. (A previous putative developer told my local councillor he didn’t plan to build schools or clinics because they expected buyers to be “non-resident”, or at least able to afford private healthcare and schools). But there will still be a vast upswing in commuter numbers on the already overloaded Northern line thanks to the new retail and office space in the area, and the support staff (cleaners, butlers, prostitutes) who service the super-rich.

It struck me forcibly that one of the first fire crews at Tuesday’s crash was from a south London station earmarked for closure: another bit of basic infrastructure gone. The main danger of the new “gold coast” is not that it will be a threat to helicopters but that it will be a vast, empty, homogeneous monument to the international wealthy — I fear for Battersea Dogs and Cats home in this rush for real estate — served by a sardine-packed underclass.

Gaga’s away with the fairies

My admiration for Americans shot up exponentially during a two-week holiday there last year but sometimes you just look at the news coming out of the land of the free and think, man, oh man, they just don’t get it, do they?

First there’s the National Rifle Association’s completely brilliant doublethink assertion that more automatic weapons will inevitably mean fewer shootings. Then there was Lady Gaga’s latest stunt. I don’t mean her witlessly “controversial” gun-bra (ho hum) or the claim she wanted to give Charlie Sheen an X-rated lap dance in a pop promo (meh, whevs). I mean the report that she wants to restore Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch “to its former glory”.

Whaaaat? Good move, Gargs. Once you’ve finished with that there are a few properties over here that belonged to another iconic entertainer, Jimmy Savile, that you might like to do up.

A space aim blown out of all proportion

Did you see that inflatable dwelling for astronauts that’s going to be tested at the International Space Station in 2015? Brilliant, wasn’t it?

One of the best things about the Beam — or Bigelow Expandable Activity Module — is that the man behind the company that built it, Robert Bigelow, initially made his money in low-budget hotels.

I picture him back in the early Nineties muttering quietly to himself: “Godammit, another day of miserly cheese-paring on the cable deal and the quality of the linen in the bedrooms just to turn a buck in this lousy hotel business. But one day, ONE DAY, I shall build an INFLATABLE SPACE POD! And it will have MY NAME ON IT!”

Take a leaf out of Bob’s book

We workers have a new folk hero and his name, or rather his pseudonym, is “Bob”. “Bob” was the top-performing software programmer at a US-based company who turned out to have outsourced his entire job to a Chinese consulting firm, for less than a fifth of his salary. This meant that, while appearing outwardly diligent, he spent all day, every day, of the working week surfing Facebook, eBay, and sites showing cat videos.

“Bob” has now left the company in question, which is surely a missed trick. Creative thinking and flexible ideas about work practices are at a premium — “Bob” should have been promoted. Hopefully he saved enough to pay someone to find a new job for him.

An earlier version of this item reported that the company
which had employed ‘Bob’ was Verizon. In fact, it was Verizon’s RISK team
which had been called in by a customer company to investigate the anomalous log
of ‘Bob’s’ activity. We are glad to clarify matters.